American composer, Carol Comune has written a six movement piano suite based on the enchanting Sleeping Beauty tale. The suite is very pianistic and full of musical challenges. They are rich with color and imaginative for teachers and their advancing young pianists. An attractive recital piece with students individually performing each movement with story in concert setting.

Complete set - 20 pages

I. Once Upon a Time

II. Gifts for Aurora

III. The Spinning Wheel

IV. Faerie's Dust

V. I Must Find My Princess

VI. Celebration

Foreward

The opera, ballet and orchestral literature is rich in musical recreations of classic fairy tales, from Cinderella of Rossini to Omphale’s Spinning Wheel of St. Saens to The Firebird of Stravinsky. Yet, the solo piano literature is strangely absent of musical suites and tone poems based on fairy tales. There are the Fairy Tales of Medtner and pieces like Schumann’s Fable from the Fantasiestucke; but these titles are used generically to describe a type of piece rather than a musical story. To be sure, at the very easy pedagogical level of piano music there are countless Red Riding Hood Suites, but in the advancing piano literature, particularly in contemporary piano literature, composers seem to have avoided the fairy tale genre. Perhaps fairy tales are considered passe´ or only for the very young. Thus, it is particularly gratifying to know that the American composer Carol Comune has recently written a six movement piano suite based on the enchanting Sleeping Beauty tale and doubly gratifying in that the work is so imaginative and colorful. From the opening brassy Fanfare that heralds the christening of the newly born Princess Aurora, to the gentle arabesques of Gifts for Aurora as the fairies bestow their gifts, to the eerie stillness of Faerie’s Dust depicting the entire kingdom in its hundred year long sleep, to the exuberant, rhythmic Celebration that is a rejoicing of both Aurora and her kingdom returned to life – in all of this music Carol Comune has perfectly matched the constantly shifting colors and nuances of Charles Perrault’s classic 17th century French fairy tale. The suite is very pianistic and full of musical challenges. It should be of immediate appeal as recital fare to teachers and their advancing young pianists. I can imagine the entire suite being played on a recital with a different student performing each movement. Yet, Sleeping Beauty should also appeal to more mature pianists in the same way that Kinderscenen and Children’s Corner allow us to revisit our childhood by way of very picturesque and attractive piano music.

Donald Waxman